Sound to light - where am I going wrong?

[Plasma]

Ok, I know this can't be that hard to do, but I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to Freestyler, so please bear with me while I ask some stupid questions:

I have 4 EuroLite LED PAR 64's and a Velleman USB interface (plus some other bits). I basically want the PAR's to do sound to light when playing music on the same PC through WinAmp or similar. I can get the PAR's to do anything I like via Cue's / manually but want them to have the option of automated mode.

The LED PAR's are all on separate channels, starting at 1 with 5 channels per PAR all the way up to channel 20

i) When I added the fixtures I ticked the box that says "Let Fixture React To Sound When Enabled".
ii) I can click the speaker on the tool bar and select my sound card, set sensitivity to full and click Start.
iii) I then select my 4 LED PAR's and choose from the menu "Fixtures", "React To Sound"
iV) Set a song going in WinAmp

and .... nothing .. not a quiver of movement on the colour front. I'm guessing I have missed a fundamental step??

Any help would be appreciated, and once I have the Fixture settings for my 5 channel LED PAR 64's finalised I'll post it in the Fixtures section.

Plasma

[Mattotone]

you have started the sound module, and told freestyler that the fixtures are aloud to react to sound.
You havnt told them how to react to the sound.

jump to next step (cues marked as sound to light advance steps to the beat)
random dmx (fixtures marked to react to sound have random pan/tilt colour /gobo paramters which change to the beat)

DMX400 light chaser also reacts to sound.

[Plasma]

you have started the sound module, and told freestyler that the fixtures are aloud to react to sound.
You havnt told them how to react to the sound.

jump to next step (cues marked as sound to light advance steps to the beat)
random dmx (fixtures marked to react to sound have random pan/tilt colour /gobo paramters which change to the beat)

DMX400 light chaser also reacts to sound.

I kind of understand what you are saying but still can't get them to react to sound.I had a look at the DMX400 and couldn't work that out either. Could you give me some pointers / instructions to get it working? I have some cue's set up but it doesn't step between them when the Jump to next cue is set. I'm happy to write a Tutorial and post it in the tut's section once I work out how to get it going.

Kind Regards

Kevin

[Plasma]

hey folks could do with a little help, I have a "Music Night" at the church hall on Friday and I've just talked them into spending £500 on some new lights and a USB > DMX controller. I'd REALLY like to be able to use them as Sound To Light in any way I can, be it normal sound to light or DMX400. The sound will be via WinAmp or from the Line In, mostly from WinAmp if that makes any difference. At present I can't get it to do any form of sound to light, I've tried lots of things, Matt mentioned I need to tell the lights what to do, I thought the whole idea of sound to light is that you don't have to program them? But I'm new to this software controlled lighting, in fact I'm new to stage lighting in general!!!!

Anyway .. if someone could give me just a few pointers in the right direction I'm sure I can suss it out. The lights I'm trying to control are LED Par Can's which occupy 5 channels ... Red, Green, Blue, Intensity, Strobe ... I have 4 of them starting at channel 1 and going up to channel 20. I can set them all to the same channels if thats easier, at the moment they are all controlled together as 1 light anyway.

Hopefully someone can put me on the right road and save me from humiliation!!!

Plasma

[djSupport]

select them all then right click react to sound...

[Mattotone]

iv put a short and quite quickly and badly put together tutorial which may help you out.
When you start the sound to light module ensure you have the rec input in the windows mixer set to either line in (for linein) or if you have a master mix (mono or stereo) have that selected and set to a good volume level (not too high so not to clip the audio interface and not too low to increase the noise floor)

[Plasma]

Thanks for the reply but I've already tried that, as stated in my first post

i) When I added the fixtures I ticked the box that says "Let Fixture React To Sound When Enabled".
ii) I can click the speaker on the tool bar and select my sound card, set sensitivity to full and click Start.
iii) I then select my 4 LED PAR's and choose from the menu "Fixtures", "React To Sound"
iV) Set a song going in WinAmp

and .... nothing .. not a quiver of movement on the colour front. I'm guessing I have missed a fundamental step??

Can you think of anything else I need to do to get them to work?

Kind Regards

Kevin

[djSupport]

when in the sound mixer for your device make sure its the recording settings your on not playback and use the appopiate thing like mnattone said, stero mix is the sounds playing thru the pc and line in is the music coming into the line in and the mic well there ya go...

[Mattotone]

Can you think of anything else I need to do to get them to work?

read the tutorial it should all be explained there.

[Mattotone]

First you need to address each fixture individually, theres very little point of having an impressive computer control lighting rig and then not be able to have controle over the lights because there all on the same address.
You will get alot more pleasing show if you make your own programs and not rely on the dmx400 nothing wrong with it, but back to my original point why have all this power and not use it.
My advice would be create a sequence even if its a simple one.
My simplist cue for led pars is having them all do the same colour in this sequence with the sliders being at full for the colours mentiond. RED, RED - GREEN, GREEN, GREEN - BLUE, BLUE, BLUE - RED) this will give you a mix of evry colour imaginable. add this to a cue set it to random then either trigger with the sound to light module or user the tap tempo.

BTW for LED lamps only the DMX400 or Cues will work with the sound to light there is currently no random dmx value support for RGB colour mixing.

Matt

[Plasma]

Matt,
Thanks for that, I didn't see your post about the tut when I posted my reply to DJ. You snook in while I was making breakfast and writing my reply.

Sat in a Hotel bar hobbling round the site on my PPC with Opera, I'll get on the Laptop when I get back to my room and have a proper look at it.

Thanks for taking the time to put something together!

Plasma

[Plasma]

Just about sorted now, thanks very much! I managed to create a cue sequence with various colours, and add it to the cue list. I'd missed the scroll bar on the bottom of the window, and have now enabled the speaker / sound to light option. Changed the recording input to Stereo Mix too, that helped, as I can now use either Line In or WinAmp and not have to change the settings.

Couldn't get DMX400 to work, I can see the speed light flickering with the sound triggers but nothing happened with the lights. Even after I assigned them a channel number.

A bit of tinkering and I should be set for Friday, then a lot more tinkering and the next time we can have a proper light show once I can drive Freestyler as well as my car!

Setting cue's to trigger on WinAmp time codes is the next thing I need to work out so I can have, a regular sequence for a particular song.

Cheers

Plasma

[Kai-Uwe]

hi,

i think at this time FS is not the right way for led-pars.

i also got a set of the eurolite led-par-64.

the dmx400 at this time dont work with them. in older versions it runs. they decided to kill the rgb-funktion in the dmx400 module. i thin there where trouble with the old standart pars.

Cues run fine. solo and with sound to light.

React to sound did nothing with the pars and the Masterdimmer is also without any funktion.

My running version is "f".

So i think at this time you are not alone with led-problems but "normal" sound to light should run. (for example going to next step in the cues.

Greetings Kai-Uwe

[Mattotone]

Could you expand on your problem? the dmx400 should work with RGB Pars as long as they have an intensity channel.
A bug report has been submitted about the master fader not affecting the dmx400.

[Kai-Uwe]

The Eurolite led got an intensity channel (4).
In the older versions of fs i can klick the point "use in dmx400" in the f it is not available. so there is no way to use tle led-par in dmx400.

i can do many things withe the led-par in the cues and scenes (did not tried out anything at this time). All works fine. including Sound to light.

Whaht did not work ist React to sound. When it is activatet nothing changed. direcly in the led-pars. The cues run to sound with the led.

And the Masterdimmer did nothing with the led. nowhere. Not in the dmx400 nor in the cues ore anywhere. i have to put out the sliders an dimm them "directly".

excuse my bad english.

Greetings Kai-Uwe